Hearts aren’t the only thing aflutter at deb ball

The Fine Arts Foundation Debutante Class of 2011. (Steve Peterson, Special to The Denver Post)

Hearts weren’t the only thing aflutter at the 2011 Fine Arts Foundation Debutante Ball. As the evening drew to a close, chairwoman Mary Ann Henry opened a chiffon-draped enclosure in the tent where guests had been dining and dancing and released several dozen Monarch butterflies.

This special touch was Henry’s gift to the debutantes, and was her way of making the ball’s theme, Butterfly Garden, come to life.

Once the party had ended, the butterflies that had been flown in from Swallowtail Farms in California were set free to establish new residence among the flora and fauna of the University of Denver campus.

Twenty-one debutantes were presented at the ball chaired by Henry and Louise Richardson. They curtsied before a receiving line that included the co-chairs; 2011 Citizens of the Arts Arlene Mohler Johnson and Don Johnson and Fine Arts Foundation president Murri Bishop on the Margery Reed Terrace and then repaired to the gigantic tent for a filet mignon dinner from Occasions by Sandy and dancing to the Jerry Barnett Orchestra.

For the first time, triplets were among the honorees. Alexa, Brittany and Caroline Warly Solsberg, the daughters of Dorothy and Dr. Murray Warly Solsberg, graduated from Cherry Creek High School with a 4.3 grade point average.

Each of the triplets has a special field of interest, and Brittany’s is athletics. She will spend her summer playing competitive tennis and preparing to help represent the United States in the Aquathlon World Championships (like a triathlon without the bicycling portion) that will be held in Beijing in September. To qualify, she had to swim over a mile in waters that registered 55 degrees and run 10 kilometers.

Brittany will attend the University of Santa Clara, where she plans to continue with her tennis.

A guest of the Warly Solsberg family was Caroline’s godmother, Canadian jazz vocalist Carol Welsman. Welsman is a five-time nominee for a Juno Award (Canada’s Grammy); her grandfather was the founder and first conductor of the Toronto Symphony; and she happily obliged when bandleader Jerry Barnett learned she was there and invited her to sing one song with his orchestra.

In addition to the triplets, others in the Debutante Class of 2011 were:

Nikki Bracken will be attending DU on a lacrosse scholarship. Amber Groves will be going to Sweetbriar; Emelie Johnson will be at Gonzaga; Eva Marie Scheele is going to Texas Christian University; Sarah Campbell will be at the University of Michigan; Amanda McHugh is enrolling at Baylor and at least three of the debs — Heather Hagan, Lauren Lake and Meghan Morin — will be attending the University of Colorado.

A tradition at every debutante ball is the father-daughter waltz, and to be sure that the triplets’ dad had the opportunity to dance with each of his daughters, the ball committee tried something new: dividing the debutante class into groups of three to dance separately to a different song under a canopy on the Margery Reed Terrace.

Murri Bishop, the Fine Arts Foundation president, was celebrating her birthday the night of the ball; president-elect Lynn Wong had accompanied her husband, Dr. David Wong, to a meeting in Sweden, and even though they were jet-lagged (they arrived back in Colorado the evening before the ball) they were both present and accounted for when the presentation began.

Gwen Lake, who will chair the 2012 ball, also was a traveler, having taken her daughter, Lauren, and three other deb friends, to Mexico in the days leading up to the ball. “The girls were very careful about their tanning,” Lake said. “No one came home with strap marks.”

The end of the ball didn’t mean that Henry could treat herself to some time off. She and fiance Jim Balock will exchange wedding vows this weekend in Beaver Creek. “It’s a good thing I’m organized,” she said.

Study after study has shown that when it comes to charitable fundraisers, Denver has more per capita than any comparably sized city in the nation. Joanne Davidson has been covering them for The Denver Post since 1985, coming here from her native California where she'd spent the previous seven years as San Francisco bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report magazine.